Many were disappointed by the lack of dynamism, including local and foreign businesspeople. They expected the NLD, as a “pro-democracy” movement, to be resolutely pro-market. But the new government was unsure of its economic agenda. Most in government advocated liberalization and a welcoming of foreign investment. At the same time, senior bureaucrats were keen to hang on to their micromanaging authority. Every department wanted to have a say in every project. What talk there was of economic reform centered on improving business conditions, creating more efficient markets, and making marginal improvements to education and health services. Debate often focused on whether or not to protect domestic businesses from global competition.
There was no diagnosis of the failures of capitalism in Burma over the past quarter century. No one advocated higher taxes or a redistribution of wealth or land. No one suggested writing off the crushing debts facing poor people or creating a new welfare state through sweeping increases in social spending. A radical, urgent plan to help ordinary people and reduce inequality was nowhere in sight.
Over these months, I met several ministers as well as the chief ministers of Rangoon and Mandalay to offer my assistance. All were eager to do the right thing, yet it was plain to see how difficult it would be for them to get anything done. In business circles and in the political class, there were rumblings, but over the summer of 2016, the millions of people who had voted for the NLD were still more than satisfied. Sure, the government was slow, but this was the first elected civilian government in fifty years; “Give them a chance!” many people posted on Facebook. NLD members had been battered and bruised, many literally, for decades. They needed time to understand how things worked and who was who. NLD supporters worried that there were conspiracies all around. They feared especially that issues around the Rohingya, nationalism, and the “protection of race and religion” would be used to weaken them politically.
Up to this point, Aung San Suu Kyi had said little about the Rohingya, or Buddhist–Muslim relations more generally. The NLD had been criticized by liberal voices in Burma for not having included a single Muslim candidate on its parliamentary election roster. There were no Muslims in government either. But Aung San Suu Kyi realized the importance of finding a lasting solution to the crisis in Arakan, and at the end of August 2016 she appointed former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to head a new advisory commission. It was a bold move. Kofi Annan was not someone who could be manipulated. He would place the rights of all people front and center of whatever recommendations he made. The army was critical of the appointment, saying that foreigners should not be included. The Arakanese Buddhist politicians were even more critical; from the start, they said they would boycott the work of the commission. There was a furious debate in parliament, but the NLD’s majority overrode all objections. Then came a new round of violence that changed everything.
ATAULLAH ABU AMMAR JUNUNI was born sometime in the 1960s in Karachi, Pakistan, to a Rohingya immigrant father and a Pakistani mother. Fluent in both Arabic and the Rohingya dialect, he grew up in Saudi Arabia, receiving an Islamic madrassa education, before going on to military training in Pakistan or Afghanistan. After the 2012 communal violence in Arakan, he and twenty or so other Rohingya exiles in Saudi Arabia set up what became known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA.10
There have long been Muslim insurgencies in Arakan. The first was the so-called Mujahedeen, which seized control of northern Arakan during the transition from colonial rule in 1948, hoping to join the area to the new East Pakistan. When Pakistan rejected any such annexation, the goal shifted to a separate Muslim “homeland” within Burma. It wasn’t until 1954, with an army counteroffensive called Operation Monsoon, that Rangoon was able to retake control. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were a series of other insurgencies, including the Rohingya Solidarity Organization, inspired in part by the rise of Islamist groups around the world.
In 2013, Ataullah began recuiting local men in the areas of Arakan closest to Bangladesh. They were not in short supply: many young men, especially, were both angry and desperate after the events of recent years and believed an armed insurrection, however unlikely to suceed, might be the only choice left. The Burmese army’s intelligence capabilities in the area were extremely weak. Nevertheless, secrecy was of the utmost importance. Several suspected informants were killed. The group used WhatsApp, the encrypted messaging app. As many Rohingya are illiterate, soundfiles were used to communicate information.
The aim was to seize control of Maungdaw township, the slice of land bordering Bangladesh. If they could take the hills just to the east as well, they could defend the terrirtory from an army counterattack. ARSA could then claim to be an Ethnic Armed Organization deserving of a place at the peace table. But things went awry. In early September 2016, before they were ready for their first operation, two of their members were arrested after informers tipped off the local police. They were released after heavy bribes, of more than 30 million kyats (around $30,000), were paid. Ataullah knew that he needed to act fast.
In the early morning of October 9, an ARSA-led force of several hundred Rohingya men, armed mainly with homemade weapons, attacked three police posts, hacking nine policemen to death and capturing sixty-two firearms and around 10,000 rounds of ammunition. Two days later, the group posted a video on YouTube claiming responsibility.
The army leadership was caught off-guard. The generals, feeling humiliated, were incensed. They were also sensitive to criticism. Myo Yan Naing Thein, the head of a prominent NLD-affiliated think tank, criticized the army commander-in-chief, blaming the attacks on his “negligence.” The think tank director was soon arrested under a draconian new anti-defamation law and sentenced to six months in prison.11
In the weeks and months that followed, the army conducted a classic counterinsurgency operation, sealing off the area, burning down villages, displacing villagers, and trying to dislodge rebels from any possible popular base of support. This is what the army had done ever since its first counterinsurgency operation, Operation Flush in 1947, which was conducted together with the British Army a few months before independence. Access by humanitarian aid organizations was also cut off. Non-Muslims began to be armed as militia, a longtime demand by Arakanese Buddhists that until now been had denied.
In one incident, the army moved into a predominantly Muslim village and found itself confronting not only ARSA rebels but hundreds of other men and boys attacking them with whatever they could use as weapons. ARSA was in this way different from other rebel groups, like the Kachin or Wa: they wore no uniforms and aimed to provoke a more general uprising. In the incident, a lieutenant colonel was shot dead and troops were forced to retreat before calling in helicopter gunships for support.
Thousands of Muslim civilians were now crossing the border into Bangladesh, bringing with them harrowing tales, including of widespread sexual violence committed by the army as part of its crackdown. “Refugee accounts paint a horrific picture of an army that is out of control and rampaging through Rohingya villages,” said Brad Adams, Asia chief for the New York–based Human Rights Watch.12
IN LATE JANUARY 2017, Debbie Aung Din (who had met George Bush in the weeks after Cyclone Nargis) organized a special trip to the Malukus in Indonesia, where Christians and Muslims had learned to live together again after years of bloody intercommunal violence. She took with her the government’s information minister, Pe Myint, as well as both Muslim and Buddhist leaders from Arakan, senior army officers, and members of the NLD. Later, she told me she felt the trip had exceeded expectations. “They began discussing practical next steps. Everyone was energized.” One of the key participants was Ko Ni, an NLD Muslim lawyer who had been pushing hard for constitutional change. We lived in the same apartment building in Rangoon, and I had last seen him on election day.
Debbie Aung Din described what happened next: “When our plane landed at Yangon airport the VIPs—the minister, two deputy ministers, and army generals—walked toward the VIP
lounge. The rest of us went to get our bags and then walked out the main exit. We all said goodbye. Ko Ni was met by his family, and I remember seeing him pick up his little grandchild and carry her across the taxi lane to wait for his car. Just then I heard an incredible bang. The next thing I knew, I saw him collapsed in a pool of blood. People were shouting “U Ko Ni!” I could see the assassin running down toward the car park with his gun held up in the air, being chased by a group.”
Ko Ni, a leading figure in the NLD and a constitutional advisor to the government, had been murdered in the most public of places. A taxi driver who led the chase was killed as well. The gunman was apprehended, and a former army officer alleged to have hired him was arrested. But no one knows exactly who was behind the plot.
The assassination marked a watershed. In the hours and days afterward, there was much debate about motive. Was Ko Ni killed because he was a Muslim of Indian descent, or because he was the leading voice for constitutional change? Whatever the motive, the effect was clear: the NLD, already fearing plots against them, was sent reeling. For months, there had been growing paranoia that the army establishment, the ex-generals, the USDP, the bureaucrats, everyone was scheming against them. Now their paranoia seemed justified. If Ko Ni could be killed, who was next? I was at Ko Ni’s burial on the outskirts of Rangoon, together with several leading NLD figures and thousands of Rangoon Muslims. Aung San Suu Kyi neither attended nor made any statement for several days. Caution now dominated.
BY FEBRUARY 2017, over 70,000 Rohingya were seeking refuge in Bangladesh. That same month, the UN alleged widespread abuses amounting to “crimes against humanity” and called for an international inquiry. The army rejected all allegations, but subsequently sacked the local police commander for “poor performance.” The Rohingya situation was now dominating international and especially Western images of Burma. Kofi Annan’s commission continued with its work. The government responded to foreign calls for an inquiry or any other action by saying that they would need to wait for the commission’s recommendations.
No one believed the crisis was in any way over. Over the spring and summer of 2017, at least thirty-three Rohingya civilians were killed by ARSA, mainly suspected police informers or village officials seen as government collaborators. In one village, a Rohingya man who denied to reporters (on a staged media visit) that army abuses had taken place was found beheaded the next day.13 The government of India had recently passed on intelligence to the Burmese government alleging links between Rohingya militants and the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.14 In July, Al-Qaeda’s Bangladesh offshoot Ansar al-Islam urged Muslim youths of Bangladesh to join the fight.15
The army’s principal demand was for the president to convene the National Defense and Security Council. The council was a constitutional body that brought together top members of the executive and legislative branches of government with leaders of the armed forces. Under the previous government, Thein Sein had regularly chaired the body, to discuss and decide security issues. During the communal riots in 2012 in 2013 and during the Kokang fighting in 2015, he used the council to declare a local state of emergency, giving the army wide-ranging powers.
According to the constitution, the president, in extreme circumstances and “in consultation” with the council, could temporarily hand over power to the commander-in-chief. This was the scenario the NLD dreaded most, a constitutional coup d’état. So Aung San Suu Kyi resolutely refused to convene such a meeting, perhaps worried that doing so might confer enhanced legitimacy on the council. Meanwhile, the army was increasingly adamant that they be given the proper authority to act.
In July, the old ruling party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, met in Rangoon with thirteen smaller parties and called for the National Defense and Security Council to be convened, along with a declaration of a local state of emergency and the toughest possible response to ARSA. As the public cry for action increased, the security forces stepped up arrests of suspected ARSA militants.
In the West, there was escalating criticism of the Burmese army and government. The crisis was portrayed first and foremost as a human rights and humanitarian disaster, the tens of thousands of refugees in Bangladesh adding to the sense of urgency. UN agencies warned that up to 80,000 Rohingya children still in the country were suffering from severe malnutrition, the result of a breakdown in local markets as well as restrictions on aid access. But for the army commander-in-chief, the priority was to show that he was not being weak in the face of what in Burma was portrayed as an unprecedented terrorist threat.
In early August, there were growing reports of ARSA killings. These now included the murder of non-Muslim civilians in the area. Arakanese Buddhist politicians flew to Naypyitaw and appealed to the army chief for increased protection. Within days, the military sent significant reinforcements to the area, including three battalions of their elite 33rd and 99th Light Infantry Divisions.
One morning that week, the traffic near my apartment building was unusually light. A taxi driver told me many parents had kept their children home because of rumors of an impending Islamic attack. In the Philippines, the Battle of Marawi was then in full swing. Militants allied with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) had seized the port city of Marawi in late May, leading to months of intense fighting with the Philippines army. Public opinion in Burma saw ARSA not as a ragtag outfit trying to defend the rights of an oppressed minority but as militants who were the local leading edge of a global Islamic threat.
On August 24, Kofi Annan submitted his report in person to both Aung San Suu Kyi and the army commander-in-chief. The former Secretary-General warned that “unless concerted action—led by the government and aided by all sectors of the government and society—is taken soon, we risk the return of another cycle of violence and radicalization, which will further deepen the chronic poverty that afflicts Rakhine State.” He offered an approach that integrated security concerns, human rights, and the long-term development of the region.16 Aung San Suu Kyi embraced the recommendations and promised their full implementation.
A few hours later, just after midnight on August 25, 2017, ARSA launched simultaneous assaults on thirty police posts as well as an army base across three townships in northern Arakan. Each assault involved hundreds of Rohingya men, a few armed with guns and explosives and the rest with machetes and homemade weapons. Ten policemen were killed, as well as a soldier and an immigration officer. The government said seventy-seven attackers were killed and one captured. ARSA tweeted: “This is a legitimate step for us to defend the world’s persecuted people and liberate the oppressed people from the hands of the oppressors!”
At around 8 a.m. that morning, ARSA fighters entered a small Hindu village, rounded up all sixty-nine men, women, and children—people of Indian descent who were neither Rohingya nor Arakanese—killed most and abducted the rest. The forty-six Hindus of a neighboring settlement were abducted as well. To this day their whereabouts are unknown.17 ARSA also attacked Arakanese Buddhist villages and the villages of the small Mro and Daingnet minority. Over WhatsApp, ARSA sent out the message: “Burn down all Rakhine villages, one by one. . . . Attack their village from all sides so that every corner of the village will start burning. Do not spare even a single village—all Mro villages, all Daingnet villages—set fire to all of them.”18
Burmese social media was alive with fear and anger that all of northern Arakan was about to be overrun by “Islamic terrorists.” “Maungdaw and Buthidaung have fallen,” said one former senior official to me that afternoon, referring to the two townships closest to Bangladesh. That was far from the case. But the stories of atrocities against non-Muslims were circulating widely within hours, fanning calls for the army to do anything it took to wipe out the enemy at the “western gate.”
The army’s response was merciless. “We received an order to burn down the entire village if there is any disturbance. If you villagers aren’t living peacefully, we will destroy everything.” Th
is was part of an audio recording of a Burmese military officer, taken during a phone conversation with a Rohingya man from Inn Din village, Maungdaw township, in late August 2017. Within days, the village was razed to the ground.19 Brutal fighting continued through the first days of September, leaving hundreds if not thousands dead.
According to the United Nations, Amnesty International, and other international human rights organizations, there were large-scale massacres in at least three Rohingya villages, perpetrated by the Burmese military, targeting mainly men but with women and children also being killed. These massacres took place in the villages from which ARSA had attacked. In at least four other villages, but likely several more, security forces opened fire indiscriminately, killing people as they fled and then burning down their homes. As many as seventy people may have been killed in each instance. These were also villages linked to ARSA, suggesting a collective punishment for the rebel attacks. In a much larger number of villages, the vast majority of people fled after hearing of violence nearby, before the army and Arakanese militia arrived. Over the coming months, the army or newly armed Arakanese Buddhist militia burned down scores of villages, or the Muslim parts of mixed villages, either after people left or to force them to leave.20
The total number of people killed in the weeks after August 25 is difficult to know, as no independent assessments or forensic teams have been allowed into the area. The French aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières estimated in December 2017 that at least 6,700 Rohingya men, women, and children were killed, mainly by gunshot wounds. This estimate was based on interviews with refugees in Bangladesh.21 Amnesty and other human rights groups have attempted to corroborate this figure with satellite imagery, and say the estimate is approximately correct.22 But without a proper investigation, no one can say for sure.
The Hidden History of Burma Page 25
